Ajax Girl

Well, this is a big win for build-your-own-social-network Ning, which just raised a massive round of funding. The new Playboy social network we covered earlier today is actually built on Ning, not self-built code or one of the many other white label social networking options available.

Once you actually sign up for the site it becomes clear it’s Ning, since their pervasive toolbar remains at the top of the site. Users actually use their Ning address to log in. You must have a .edu address to get an invitation, but you can then sign up using any Ning account.

Whether or not this network is successful, it’s great validation for Ning.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147128937/

The recent launch of Silicon Valley funded adult/porn site Zivity raised a few eyebrows. Now one of the old sovereigns of sexy is getting into the game, too. CrunchGear reports that Playboy is launching their own sexy social networking site just for college students, Playboy U.

Playboy U requires all users to have a .edu email addresses, mimicking Facebook’s early policy of only allowing college students to join. They say, “Sorry, but high schoolers, old dudes and your Mom can’t join”. However, The site won’t be as lascivious as the periodical. In what may be a bummer for some, the site will be “an exclusive college-only non-nude social network”. Furthermore, it will be a place to “show your school pride, connect with other students and celebrate the social side of college”. But I’m sure they’re not going to police the whole network for porn.

Student profiles will consist of the usual social network features including, bios, photos, videos, Blogs, and Forums. Schools will have customized pages, parties and on-campus events, and a national radio show with student callers.

Other magazines have been trying to get with the times and fight floundering readership by launching their own social networks too. Rolling Stone recently announced plans for their own network as well. But Playboy may have some better luck with readership already skewing toward the college following.

Lots of college students lament the loss of their exclusive Facebook social network to the older crowd. They may be receptive to a newer, cooler alternative. Something tells me that Playboy may not be the brand to steal their hearts, though.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147086627/

VideoEgg’s overlay advertising system has been in the market for a year and is driving “significant” revenue for the company. it’s so successful, in fact, that they recently launched a Facebook advertising network based on the same technology.

The idea is to use a Flash overlay advertisement with some basic information and graphics that takes up a small part of the viewable video area. Users click the ad and get a more in depth video ad. It’s less intrusive than a pre or post roll ad, and has far better performance than ads placed around a video. It’s likely to become the standard way ads are placed on video, even potentially on normal television as the thirty second ad spot continues to decline.

Given VideoEgg’s success with the unit it’s no surprise that YouTube has adopted the same format with their advertising. But it is surprising that YouTube failed to give even a passing mention to the company that invented the unit. VideoEgg also claims to have a patent application on this - something YouTube will certainly have to deal with down the road.

Nick Carr points out that much of the early press on YouTube was written by people who failed to do their homework. Carr trashes a CNET article that he says was basically an ad for YouTube. CNET subsequently changed the title of their article but there is still no mention of VideoEgg’s invention of the unit

Meanwhile, VideoEgg seems to be handling the situation well and taking advantage of the publicity. They added the graphic above to their home page, and are talking to press about their product. Suddenly, everyone is interested.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147081814/

Lypp.com (site is not yet live) is a new group calling service set to launch a private beta in September. There are a lot of conference calling services out there already, not least among them being the full blown meeting applications (GoToMeeting, WebEx). However, Lypp wants to make initiating a conference call dead simple (download free) over IM, SMS, and email. The service will be free at the time of launch (each user will get 500 minutes of free calling, no per-min charges, no monthly fees).

IM will be the first mode for initiating conference calls. Users will associate an IM ID with their service and add Lypp as a friend. You’ll then be able to initiate a call by sending a command to that IM buddy, such as call [number, number, number]. Lypp will call your phone and those of your friends, connecting you all in a conference call. Most likely the calls are initiated and tied together over a VOIP bridge. Typing in my friends numbers instead of just selecting contacts on a downloaded application seems like it could get annoying, though.

They’re keeping it simple for launch, but have plans for an API, advanced in-call controls, recording, and possible location based. The API will integrate with calendaring, address books, and other complementary applications.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147077275/

Peer to peer lending service Lending Club will close a $10.26 million series A round of financing from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners tomorrow. This comes a few months after the company’s $2 million angel round. Coinciding wit the investment, Jeff Crowe and Dan Ciporin (former ceo of shopping.com) are joining Lending Club’s board of directors.

Similar to other P2P lending sites (Prosper, Zopa, Kiva), LendingClub matches borrowers and lenders. However, LendingClub doesn’t work through their own website, but solely through Facebook on the application they launched at the F8 platform launch conference. Borrows and lenders a linked up using their “LendingMatch” system, which recommends loans based on credit and their social relationships to each other. The idea being that trusted relationships make lending more likely and defaults less likely. The application currently has over 13,000 installs.

Unlike Prosper, interest rates aren’t determined through bidding, but calculated based on the borrowers credit score, debt to income ratio, and amount of the loan. There are no hidden fees, and the interest rate is fixed for three years. In July the service surpassed $100K in loans. They recently claimed a little more than 4 out of 5 loans get funded and haven’t reported any defaults or late payments.

It’s still the early days for this industry, and as TC commenters point out, it’s very much a case of Caveat Emptor.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147070712/

Stocks.us recently surfaced in the TechCrunch Forums. It’s an aggregator around public company stock news that has a suspiciously similar approach and look/feel as blog news aggregator TechMeme.

The site groups news items from major media (Reuters, WSJ, USAToday, etc.). Lots of stories = higher placement on the site. Newer stories are linked in the right sidebar. It updates every 15 minutes.

Like TechMeme, this will be a killer resource for people tracking breaking public company news.

The difficult part of building an aggregator like this is figuring out what stories are related and grouping them properly. TechMeme uses links between blogs. Since major news sites don’t link to each other, Stocks.us must be using keyword and semantic analysis.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147045628/

Genealogy site MyHeritage is merging with Pearl Street Software. Through the team-up MyHeritage will pick up Pearl Street’s VP of Technology and gain control of the #2 family tree software in worldwide sales (Family Tree Legends), the #2 family tree submission site (GenCircles) with more than 160 million ancestors, and more than 400 million public records in the Family Tree Legends Records Collection.

The addition of the team and products put the company in a better position to deal with upstart Geni, which announced over 5 million profiles in 5 months in July. They’ve also been getting a great deal of the press. However, Geni still has a long way to go when taking on the established ancestry industry. MyHeritage has a large lead on the site with over 10 million registered users of their site. Ancestry.com, the leading genealogy site, has added 5.6 million people to their family trees this week.

As a sign of the competition, MyHeritage will now be making all the Pearl Street Software free.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/147059850/

Chris Double has posted a SVG video tag demo that plays a port of a Silverlight demo.

As you watch videos playing, you can move, resize, and rotate the canvases. All via:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/146961322/svg-video-now-playing-on-a-standard-near-you

We’re often victims of design piracy. Roughly once a week someone emails us with an anonymous tip that someone has ripped off our “UI look and feel” and is using it for their own site or their own app. It’s amazing what people and businesses think they can get away with.

We send the violators an email letting them know they can’t take our work, our words, our code, or our design. 98% of the time the violators respond favorably and take the design down or alter it sufficiently that it’s no longer recognizable as our design. 1% of the time it takes a few emails before they acquiesce. And 1% of the time it requires legal intervention.

A blank canvas

They usually apologize by saying they didn’t know it was wrong or that their hired design firm did it. But then sometimes they say “Come on, how many different ways are there to design a web page or a web app?” That infuriates me. The web browser is a blank canvas. A big empty box that can hold almost anything. Fill it with something original, something you can call your own.

Inspiration in time

Whenever I run into designer’s block or just need visual design inspiration I turn to the world of wrist watches. I’ve posted on this topic before, but it comes up again often so I figured I’d hit it again.

A tiny canvas with endless possibilities

A wrist watch is a tiny canvas with something to keep that canvas tied to your wrist. It’s just a couple inches round or square or triangular. It has a fixed, common purpose: Tell time. The rules of time are understood. 24 hours in a day, usually displayed as 12. Your brain can tell if it’s AM or PM.

And yet somehow, with these physical and practical constraints, watch design flourishes. From analog to digital to a combination of the two, tens of thousands of designs are born. Different type, different proportions, different shapes, different perspectives, different indicators, different buttons, different bezels, etc. Fresh new designs hit the market all the time. Here are about a hundred different interpretations of the same question: “What time is it right now?”

If watch designers can do it, web designers can do it

So if someone can make a 2” circle look unique, you can make a million pixels look unique. Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t think there’s only a few ways to display content. Don’t think there’s only a couple ways to style a sidebar. Don’t think there’s only a couple different designs for a header with tabs. Don’t think a list always has to look the same or there’s only one way to distinguish time-sensitive information. Don’t think there’s only a couple ways to call something out as important or high priority.

As a web designer you have a lot more options and variables and possibilities than a watch designer. Build something that’s yours. Make something you can call your own. Make your own mark. Cut the excuses and be a designer.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/575-but-theres-only-so-many-ways-to-do-something-right

Indesit MOON
From: Tom Martin

I know it’s hard to get excited about a washing machine but I just saw the Indesit MOON and was amazed it only had FOUR buttons.

It also has this little ring that works like a progress bar, so you can just glace and see how long the cycle has left.

You should spread the word that washing machines have become simple!

Simplicity In UX

From: Shawn Oster

Thought you’d enjoy this as Kynan Antos also subscribes to the less is more school of thought:

Simplicity In UX

4. Remove everything possible (this will be controversial, expect to work outside your comfort zone) (Things to remove – text, iconography, features, unnecessary configuration, or settings, etc…)

He’s also posting his early UI prototypes for the WHS project, nice to see the evolution.

Bad product design in everyday life
From: Jeff Patterson

Interesting thread on poor product design at Straight Dope.

There were many things there I had never thought to be irritated about, and now I am. Well done, SDMB.
News Corp.
From: Nate Rosenberg

A recent quote about NewsCorp in the Wall St. Journal [via TP] reminded me of something you all wrote in a recent post.

Unlike typical big companies, News Corp. isn’t known for crafting and pursuing detailed, long-term business strategies. Instead, Mr. Murdoch follows his instincts, grabbing opportunities when they arise and sometimes giving them up just as quickly.

Sounds like 37signals…

Just as we don’t believe in functional specs for software, we don’t believe in functional specs for companies.

The screamers
From: Jorge Bernal Ordovás

I was reading about building an Open Source business and arrived at Luis Villa’s blog. I think this quote reflects quite well the Getting Real spirit…

Remember, the pissed off people scream — the happy people just go on with their lives. So you can’t just say ‘more people screamed than thanked us’ — that isn’t a useful metric.

The 10th Dimension
From: The Colonel

Other than being a really simple, interesting way to present multi-dimensional theory, I found the information design [here] to be wonderfully clear.

How To Blow Your Mind: The 10th Dimension

Have an interesting link, story, or screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Contact svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/548-mailbag-indesit-the-10th-dimension-simplicity-in-ux-etc